Habib's Garden

From the book

“Give the work that most needs to be done to the people who most need the work”

"If people in California want to have solar panels installed in their homes, there is a 2-6 month waiting period. Why? There are not enough people trained to do the work. We are experiencing a labor shortage in the middle of a recession. The major barriers to a more rapid adoption of renewable energy and energy efficiency are not financial, technical, or ideological. The biggest problem is simply that employers can’t find enough trained workers to do the work. Hundreds of thousands of workers are needed now to make every building in the country energy efficient."

"Green collar jobs are the 2.0 version of old-fashioned blue-collar jobs, upgraded to respect the Earth and meet the environmental challenges of today."

"A green economy is not just about reclaiming thrown-away stuff, but also about reclaiming thrown-away lives. Not just about recycling materials for a second life, but also about gathering up people—the at-risk youth, veterans coming home from war, people living in poverty—and giving them a second chance."

"To create a green collar economy we must bring together not just the relatively affluent people who worry about ice caps melting, rainforests disappearing, and polar bears drowning as a result of global warming, but also people of more modest means who worry about local environmental problems like dirty air, polluted water, childhood asthma rates, and lack of access to fresh food. Even though the less wealthy may not consider themselves environmentalists, they have the means and capacity to push for important environmental changes at the local level."

About the book

In The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, acclaimed activist and environmental leader Van Jones tackles the challenges of oil dependence, a sagging economy, and global warming itself, transforming these looming threats into enormous financial opportunities.

Jones gives voice to a different kind of environmentalism, one deeply rooted in the lives and struggles of ordinary people. It’s not about green consumers; it’s about green workers and bringing the environmental movement to the working class. The message of The Green Collar Economy is clear: “Give the work that most needs to be done to the people who most need the work,” solving two pressing problems—pollution and poverty—at once. In turn, you provide people with not just a paycheck, but also a purpose. Like FDR’s New Deal, Jones’s plan involves the government putting people to work for the benefit of the economy. In this “New Green Deal,” workers will be employed to install solar panels, harness wind power, build hybrid engines, etc., which will create a green collar workforce.

Van Jones brings a fresh perspective to these crucial issues. As an African-American father and Yale-educated attorney, he has spent his adult life fighting for the planet and its people. He recently worked successfully with Congress to pass the Green Jobs Act of 2007. That historic legislation authorized $125 million in funding to train 35,000 people for jobs in the environmental sector.

Rachel Carson’s 1963 landmark book Silent Spring was the pivotal ecological examination of the last century. Now, rising above the impenetrable debate over the environment and the economy, The Green Collar Economy delivers a timely and essential call to action for a new century.

About Van Jones

Van Jones is the founder and president Green For All, a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive, green economy, strong enough to lift millions of people out of poverty. Jones is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. As an advocate for the toughest urban constituencies and causes, he has won many honors, including the Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellowship. Jones is also cofounder and board president of The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California. The center promotes alternatives to violence and incarceration, including a successful “Books Not Bars” campaign that has helped reduce California’s overall youth prison population by more than 30 percent. He recently gave a number of keynote addresses at the Democratic National Convention. Jones has been featured in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, Business Week, and has been interviewed on Fox News, CNN-TV, Tavis Smiley, and the Colbert Report.

A 1993 Yale Law graduate, Jones lives in Oakland, California with his wife and two sons.